EVEN by the standards of moral equivocation that have become the norm in so many drug-addled sports, the 12-page memo sent by Marion Jones' legal team to a New York judge in an attempt to keep her out of prison is a classic.
It portrays the most celebrated female athlete of her generation as a misfortunate figure more sinned against than sinning, the victim of a heartless media conspiracy to paint her as a villainess, and a devoted mother of two battling bravely against
tragic circumstance. Moving between the layers of lawyer-speak and attempted pathos, it's almost possible to forget for a moment this is the person who made the conscious decision to perpetrate the greatest fraud in modern Olympic history.
When Judge Kenneth Karas sentences Jones at the US Federal Court in White Plains, New York next Friday, not for fooling fans for over a decade, but for lying to federal agents about her steroid use and her role in an elaborate cheque scam, it's likely he won't be swayed by the grandiloquence of the brief. Or be impressed by the fact newspapers have been full of the lawyers' argument that Jones has already suffered enough for her crimes.
"The guilty plea in this matter and the circumstances surrounding it have been a very painful and life-changing experience for Marion Jones-Thompson," wrote F. Allen Hill and Henry J. DePippo in their plea for leniency. "She has been cast from American hero to national disgrace. This part of her story will forever be one of personal tragedy. To be clear, the public scorn, from a nation that once adored her, and her fall from grace have been severe punishments. She has suffered enormous personal shame, anguish and embarrassment. She has been stripped of her gold medals, her accomplishments, her wealth and her public standing."
She may have expanded her name since marrying the Barbadian Olympic bronze medallist Obadele Thompson last February but can they really be talking about the sprinter whose use of performance-enhancing substances was so calculated she used to have her blood analysed by a private laboratory just to be sure she remained one step ahead of the testers? The same woman who took to wearing make-up for the first time in her life once the steroids caused her to break out in terrible acne. The athlete who at various times was regularly destroying rivals while using a cocktail of Human Growth Horome, insulin, erythropoietin (EP0) and THG, the so-called designer steroid from the BALCO laboratory in California.
Never mind the trifling matter of Jones getting America to adore her by falsifying the record books, Hill and DePippo contend her exemplary behaviour since being implicated in the money-laundering scheme involving fellow disgraced sprinter, ex-boyfriend and father of her four year old son, Tim Montgomery, is somehow worthy of clemency. As evidence of her penitence, they cite the speed with which she handed back her five besmirched medals from the Sydney Games and the dramatic, tearful admission made to the public live from the courthouse steps back in October. So rarely does any modern athlete confess to steroid use it's nearly possible to buy into this argument. Nearly.
The whole episode still reeks of one of those death-bed conversions where the soon-to-expire atheist suddenly demands to see a priest. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain by changing her story so completely once put on the rack by the feds. Coming clean was really the last card she had left to play. All but finished as a competitive runner, her mea culpa satisfied the government's desperation to properly snare at least another high-profile athlete from the BALCO affair and seriously reduced the length of her prison sentence. It also kick-started the second act of her own life because once Karas delivers his verdict, the real fun will start.
First, there will be a book deal. In America, there's always a book deal. No matter how enormous the lie told or the fraud committed, publishers queue up for the rights to tell the tale. Cognisant of how well Jones will perform in front of the camera (an ability that makes her theatrics on the courthouse steps look like so much crocodile tears) when flogging the story on television, they will be talking about advances well into the six-figure range. Nothing plays better in these parts than a good morality tale laced with a nice dose of self-flagellation.
Anybody who believes Jones didn't figure all this into her decision to end the long-running charade that was her career is just being naive and doesn't know how the American media industry works. Sometime in the next year, there will most probably be a space reserved for her on Oprah Winfrey's couch. That will be where the book is launched from. To the sympathetic nods of the host, she will no doubt explain her bad choices as the consequence of overwhelming pressure to please greedy sponsors and the malign influence of the myriad bad men with whom she had romantic and professional relationships. And a lot of viewers will take this at face value and empathise.
Then there'll be a movie. It may not be a Hollywood blockbuster with Spike Lee at the helm. It might just be a small-scale television job on CBS some Sunday night. But there will be a movie and the rights to that will refurbish her bank balance quickly enough too. The athlete commercially savvy enough to earn $80,000 just to turn up for a race and $3m a year in endorsements from Nike must have realised once the federal agents were on her trail there was far more money to be had by quickly embracing contrition rather than persisting with increasingly ridiculous and financially embarrassing denials.
The role of cash in Jones confession to all the sins she spent years convincingly denying in press conferences shouldn't be underestimated. Not when the highest-paid female runner ever is so broke that one lawyer was actually pursuing the five Olympic medals (now the property of the International Olympic Committee) in lieu of $250,000 owed to a former coach. She lost two houses to foreclosure in the past year, admitted to a judge in a bankruptcy case to having no clue where her fortune went, and surely realised the job market for a disgraced athlete and proven liar doesn't extend far beyond cashing in on the story.
Her lawyers may be desperately trying to keep her out of jail but ultimately a few months behind bars will make for one more interesting chapter in the inevitable book.
Legendary Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens pleads innocence in new steroids scandal The greatest baseball pitcher of his generation freely admits that several times during the latter half of his career he pulled down his pants to receive injections from his personal trainer. That much everybody agrees on. But former New York Yankee Roger Clemens claims the needles contained nothing stronger than vitamin B-12 and the anaesthetic Lidocaine. His one-time employee, Brian McNamee, alleges the bottles were full of the steroid Winstrol, testosterone and Human Growth Horome. This is the embarrasing juncture in its troubled recent history that baseball has reached.
After a week in which America has debated the veracity of the conflicting stories, Clemens will tonight put his case to a national audience on the CBS's "60 Minutes" where he'll be interviewed by 89 year old Mike Wallace, a Yankees' fan and close friend of club owner George Steinbrenner. The early leaks of the broadcast suggest the player will continue to protest his innocence with the same vigour he's been evincing since the day last month when former Senator George Mitchell (best known in Britain for his role as Bill Clinton's peace envoy to Northern Ireland) issued a report into baseball's steroid use in which Clemens had a starring role.
"I want to state clearly and without qualification: I did not take steroids, human growth hormone or any other banned substances at any time in my baseball career or, in fact, my entire life," said the 45 year old Texan who came out of retirement to pitch for the Yankees last summer for a handy $4.5m a month. "Those substances represent a dangerous and destructive shortcut that no athlete should ever take. I am disappointed that my 25 years in public life have apparently not earned me the benefit of the doubt…"
Despite his passionate denials of the eight and half pages of evidence against him (McNamee testified at length about his administering of performance enhancing substances to Clemens), not too many fans wearied by the steady drip of drug scandals are inclined to believe him. Almost every other major leaguer fingered by Mitchell has already come out and admitted to some or all of the charges levelled. Indeed, one of the biggest names to do just that was another Yankee icon Andy Pettitte who confessed to dabbling in HGH. Pettitte happens to be Clemens' best friend in the game, his long-time training partner, and a fellow client of McNamee.
There's also the matter of his career trajectory, something which – much like that of disgraced San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds – has always had a disturbing arc to it. As he reached his mid-30s, Clemens looked to be a seriously diminished force and was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the Toronto Blue Jays. McNamee told Mitchell he began injecting the player in the summer of 1998 and an analysis of his statistics from that point onwards show a marked improvement. Even more relevant, every date of a supposed injection corresponds with a subsequent spike in his performance as, at an age when most pitchers are fading, he got stronger and better.
Along the way, he transformed himself from a great player on the slide into the greatest of his era, the author of 354 wins, and somebody suspiciously capable of defeating the ravages of father time. With baseball the last major professional sport to introduce proper drug-testing in 2004, nobody was too inclined to question the validity of his achievements until Senator Mitchell came calling for a chat. Like all but a handful of members of the Major League Baseball Players' Association (MLBPA), Clemens refused to co-operate with the investigation that he's now trying to sabotage.
He will follow up the television interview with a press conference tomorrow in which he is set to issue more vehement denials. As he does so, he runs the risk of bringing more serious trouble upon himself. McNamee's lawyer Richard Emery has told reporters he will be closely monitoring Clemens' comments for potential defamation of his client and will be quick to sue on that score. If that raises the possibility of an explosive court case farther down the line, there's also the spectre of the pitcher flirting with perjury, the charges currently facing Bonds.
On Friday evening, Clemens was formally asked to appear before a Congressional sub-committee in Washington on January 16th which is to re-examine the issue of steroids in baseball. There, he will be speaking under oath and any untruths or half-truths uttered could incur the wrath of the federal authorities. No matter what happens between now and then, he is still scheduled be the star guest at a convention of Texas high school baseball coaches in Waco next Saturday. He will deliver a keynote speech entitled: "My Vigorous Workout - How I Played So Long."
The full article contains 1942 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
